Media Release 7 June 2024
Right to Life believes that New Zealand is blessed with 32 hospices, which provide world class palliative care for vulnerable patients.
Right to Life believes that the support of the community for providing the $90 million required in public funding to maintain the hospices, is endangered by the majority of hospices now allowing patients to be assessed ( if eligible) to be given a lethal injection or assisted in their suicide.
Right to Life encourages the community to express their concerns to their local hospice and to consider withholding financial support, if they are not prepared to protect their vulnerable patients from assessment for euthanasia in their hospice.
Euthanasia and assisted suicide are intrinsically evil, they emanate from a culture of death, they are not part of health care ,and have absolutely no place in a hospice. The ultimate objective of the advocates for euthanasia is to have patients assessed and killed in the hospice, with a lethal injection being the preferred “end of life choice”.
Right to Life commends those hospices which have exercised their right to an informed conscience and have refused to allow any patients’ requests to be assessed for their eligibility to receive a lethal injection or assistance in suicide on site in their hospice
Right to Life encourages the community to generously support financially those hospices which protect the right to life of their patients, by refusing to allow their patients to be assessed for a lethal injection.
The government fully funds doctors to kill eligible patients or assist in their suicide. However the government only funds about 50% of hospice costs, amounting to $92 million per year, a further $90 million is raised with op shops, raffles and donations.
Right to Life recently wrote to all 32 New Zealand hospices, asking if they permitted the assessment of patients for euthanasia on their premises. There were 12 responses received, a number of hospices stated that they were complying with the legislation in allowing patients to exercise their right to be assessed on site in the hospice, for eligibility to receive a lethal injection from a doctor or assisted in suicide.
Right to Life respectfully disagrees and agrees with the Mary Potter hospice that there is nothing in the End of Life Choice Act 2019 which obliges hospices to provide assessment for euthanasia, the only legal obligation is to direct enquiries from their patients concerning euthanasia, to the SCENZ unit in the Ministry of Health.
Ken Orr,
Spokesperson,
Right to Life New Zealand Inc
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